open-edit

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---
name: open-edit
description: Video work with VEED's hosted services and a CLI toolkit — word-timed transcription, cutting, background removal, AI presenters, lipsync, any fal model, sound mixing, and a Chrome renderer for HTML compositions that re-renders only what changed. Captions, edits, motion graphics, or pieces with no footage at all; hands a finished piece to VEED's editor as an editable project, and takes projects back from it. Use when the user wants video made, edited, or captioned by an agent.
---

# open-edit

You author the piece yourself, as an HTML page, and render it with `render`. OpenEdit supplies what a
bare shell does not: VEED's hosted services on one login, measured tools for cutting and sound, and a
renderer that re-renders only the stretch you changed. `openedit` below is short for
`npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli`; every command explains its flags with `--help`.

## Setup

Once per workspace, before the first command. WORKSPACE is the current project root, or the current
directory outside a project.
```
npx --yes @veedstudio/openedit-cli init --dry --workspace "$WORKSPACE"
npx --yes @veedstudio/openedit-cli init --workspace "$WORKSPACE"
```
Read the final `preflight:` line, not the exit code: `ready — OPEN_EDIT_ROOT=…` means go, and `runs/`
and the recorded preferences live under that root. If init prints `APPROVAL REQUIRED`, tell the user
every exact action and wait for an explicit yes, then run it again with `--auto-approve`. When the final
line says the user runs the install commands, `--auto-approve` cannot run them: give the user those
commands and run init again once they are done. Never install anything machine-global without that
yes, and never infer it from the render request. When a command prints `update available`, tell the user
once; run the `init --update` command it names only after they say yes, and if they decline, carry on
without asking again.

## One folder per piece

Keep everything a piece is made of under `runs/<key>/`: the page, its assets, renders, audio. The code
is the edit: that folder is how the user comes back later to change one scene or reuse the piece for
another video, so nothing it needs lives anywhere else.

## Tools

| Need | Command |
| --- | --- |
| A transcript with real per-word times | `transcribe <video> [...]` runs the provider recorded in `$OPEN_EDIT_ROOT/.open-edit-prefs.json`. None recorded (the command refuses and says so), "No VEED login found", or a failed run: read `TRANSCRIPTION.md` first |
| Remove, reorder or join takes | read `CUT.md` (`speech-probe`, `apply-edl`, `retime-transcript`) |
| Join whole clips whose shapes disagree | `concat-videos` (re-encodes to one canvas at 30 fps) |
| Look at a video, a page or a pile of images | `frames <video> --at <sec,...> --sheet` (one sheet of those moments; `--images` for a folder of references), `render --stills` |
| Cut the subject out of its background | `background-removal` (the free VEED route; when it cannot run, the command stops with fal's price, and only `--fal` buys) |
| A presenter speaking a script | Fabric: read `FABRIC.md` first |
| New audio on a face | `lipsync` |
| Any fal model: images, video, music, voice, effects | `fal schema <model>`, then `fal run <model> --input <json or @file> --run runs/<key>` (`--batch <jobs.json>` for many); local files in the input are uploaded for you |
| Web fonts as local files | `fonts <Family> [...] --out <dir>` |
| Real, licensed pictures | `stills search`, `stills show`, `stills save` |
| One soundtrack from several pieces | `mix-audio runs/<key>` (voice tracks duck the bed; `mix-audio --help` has the spec) |
| Sound on a render, at delivery loudness | `mux-audio --video <render> --audio <source clip or built track> --out <file>` |
| The piece in VEED's editor for the user to change, or a project they bring from it | read `VEED.md` (`veed-project`, `veed-pull`) |

Fabric, background removal, lipsync and `veed-project` reuse the VEED transcription login: s